Living the high life in 1980s Manhattan, Patrick Bateman has it all – looks, money, style and status. He and his entourage buy the most expensive designer clothes, eat at the most exclusive restaurants and party at the hottest clubs. But privately, Patrick indulges in another kind of transgression. And people - including those closest to him - keep disappearing.
Cast:
Patrick Bateman – Matt Smith
Paul Owen – Ben Aldridge
Craig McDermott – Charlie Anson
Jean – Cassandra Compton
Courtney – Katie Brayben
Evelyn – Susannah Fielding
Detective Kimball – Simon Gregor
Creative team:
Director – Rupert Goold
Set – Es Devlin
Costume – Katrina Lindsay
Well, what an odd choice of material for a
musical. I enjoyed both the film and the
original book, and was really interested to see how this would be turned into a
stage production. The answer was that
technology has been thrown at it in buckets – and tonight that technology
proved unreliable. 10 minutes in, just
as the threads of the spell were being woven and starting to come together, I
noticed something had gone wrong with the lighting. The cast carried on – and then a techie
appeared from nowhere and announced that the performance would have to be
suspended until it had been sorted. And
then Matt Smith (who should know a lot better) did something completely
unbelievable and totally unprofessional.
He “broke the fourth wall” and addressed the audience direct. And what is worse, he cracked a couple of
jokes and started clowning around. This
amused the audience – but it broke the spell completely. The threads fell apart, reality entered in
and it gave the audience permission to laugh.
And then, when the show resumed, Mr. Smith carried on with the clowning,
interspersing his dialogue with a couple of comments about déjà vu, giving the
audience permission to carry on laughing.
And that is what they carried on doing, almost to the very end of the
show, interpreting the show as some kind of comedy, which completely destroyed
both the spell and any tension. I got
irritated with the laughter, and with the audience, and ultimately with the
show itself. What the cast should have
done is just left the stage quietly, and then returned after the tech problems
were sorted out and carried on weaving the spell. But at least two of them took the opportunity
to clown about. It was Unprofessional
with a capital U.
The script of this is very, very strange.
It’s a psychological thriller, but there are too many lines which could be interpreted
as funny. And when your audience has been given permission to laugh (by your
clowning), they will laugh at them, and turn your thriller into something
humorous. And then they will actively
look for other things to laugh at, and laugh at them, and unfortunately there
are too many things in the production that could be seen (by someone looking
for something to laugh at) as funny; someone doing a silly accent, someone
wearing a funny wig, four people standing with their heads through those boards
you used to see at the seaside when having a comedy photograph taken, even (and
these are very cheap laughs indeed) someone camping it up when playing a gay
character. I did wonder why the writer
thought it would be appropriate to make this a musical, when it would have
functioned rather better as a straightforward play with music. It certainly would have increased the
tension, and made the production feel somewhat less superficial. It is certainly far more superficial than the
book or the film – there is an empty kind of gloss about it all. Now, this could be a very clever aspect – the
lives of most of the characters are very, very glossy and very, very
empty. But I don’t think that this is
how the production was planned.
There is certainly not a great deal of
blood. The first death doesn’t come
until almost at the interval. The tension has taken just that bit too long to
build to a decent level; until then, we’ve just been watching a musical play
about some fairly repellent people being repellent to other people. In fact, there really isn’t a decent
“Silence” until 15 – 20 minutes from the end.
Here I have to digress for a second and explain the term “Silence”
(note, capital S). I’ve used the term
before but not for a long while, and new readers may welcome some
explanation. Silence is the absence of
noise, but a “Silence” is one of those moments in the theatre when the entire
audience is holding its collective breath and concentrating really, really hard
– nobody coughs, nobody fidgets in their seat, all eyes are on the stage and
everyone is more or less holding their breath, because there’s something deeply
dramatic going on and everyone is focussing totally. I’ve defined “Silence” in the past as “the
noise that black velvet makes”. And we
get a “Silence” in the scene where Bateman takes his secretary Jean back to his
apartment – and none of the audience are completely sure what is going to
happen. Is he going to murder her with
the nail gun or will she get away? But
its too late – there should have been more of them, and they should have come
earlier. The tension has taken too long
to build up, and much of it has been dissipated by the jolly musical numbers
and the opportunities for humour.
I also think that the show is too overladen
with technology for its own good; the slightly thin story gets rather
overwhelmed by it. Not that the
technology isn’t wonderful in its own right – it certainly adds an extra
dimension. But does the script warrant
it, or even need it? With horror,
simpler is usually better. You have only
got to go see a performance of The Woman in Black to prove this – you’ll be
scared out of your wits by a production that uses only one set and some odds
and ends of furniture. Your imagination
will provide the rest. The film version
of American Psycho is so bloody, so visceral, that the stage cannot compete
with it. It attempts to become a
psychological drama – and in the main fails badly.
Not that there isn’t a great performance
going on here. Matt Smith really shows his
craft– you need considerable talent to pull off the role of Patrick Bateman and
in less competent hands the role would be a write-off and just wouldn’t
work. The problem is that most people
aren’t here to see Matt Smith’s talent – they’re here to see the man who played
Doctor Who, and probably wouldn’t recognise decent stagecraft if it came and
sat on their face. In the second act,
Smith gives a performance that is increasingly spellbinding and is totally
riveting by the final scene. But the
rest of the cast are hampered by the comedy, the role of Detective Kimball is
under-written and Cassandra Compton’s attempts at winsomeness are scuppered by
her inconsistent accent and insistence on using a voice that even Minnie Mouse
would find irritating.
Despite the stunning central performance,
despite the incredible technical aspects of the show, I have to give it a
resounding “meh”.
What the critics said:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/10514037/American-Psycho-review-Glib-heartless-and-pretentious.htmlhttp://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/american-psycho--theatre-review-matt-smith-regenerates-as-ripped-ubernarcissist-9001356.html
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/american-psycho-theater-review-665754
http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2013-12-13/matt-smiths-performance-in-american-psycho---review-round-up
http://www.whatsonstage.com/london-theatre/reviews/12-2013/american-psycho-almeida_32952.html
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